Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing is a study of freedom of speech, good government, civic responsibility, public education, and the foundations of religion and society, as seen through the eyes of seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza. During the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, a new kind of public sphere emerged. Courtly structures of political advice made room for new, republican forms of public consultation between the sovereign powers and the general citizenry. Missing, however, were guidelines for how and when to address questions of public concern and how to form unprejudiced citizens in possession of their own free judgment, capable of speaking up for themselves in public deliberations with the common interest in view. The book argues that Spinoza's conception of the freedom of philosophizing, and the systematic political theory he developed to defend it in his 1670 Theological-Political Treatise, were conceived to provide just such guidelines. It shows how
